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Self-styled 鈥渁ged professor鈥� William Ian Miller grows old gracefully in Losing It with his reflections on the time when your faculties fail

DESPITE the best efforts of transhumanists and purveyors of the 鈥渟ingularity鈥�, we all face seeing our bodies eventually collapse and our mental marbles depart singly, or rush out en masse.

Science has no cures for ageing. Mind gyms and brain games might not work as advertised, and neuroscientists and doctors understand normal function not much further than being able to provide generic health messages about taking exercise, avoiding obesity and maybe learning meditation.

So how are we to deal with the decline of our youth in an era of death-denying baby boomers, botox addicts, and people seeking to gloss over the decrepitude of old age? One solution is to throw all the erudition, wit, and distemper you can muster at it. This is the preferred route of law professor William Ian Miller, that unusual kind of writer whose works genuinely and comfortably span academic and lay worlds, largely because his mind is well furnished after years of delving into anthropology, psychology, literature and history.

The book鈥檚 subtitle sets up our expectations: 鈥�Losing It: In which an aging professor LAMENTS his shrinking BRAIN, which he flatters himself formerly did him Noble Service. A Plaint, tragi-comical, historical, vengeful, sometimes satirical and thankful in six parts, if his Memory does yet serve鈥�.

And we are off on a fast and furious journey through the riches of Miller鈥檚 brain: from the peddlers of positive psychology 鈥� 鈥渢hese fields are either culpably moronic or a swindle鈥� 鈥� to the ship in the opening of the epic poem Beowulf, laden with goods for the use of Danish king Scyld Scefing in the next world.

He poses body-blow questions such as: 鈥淚s wisdom a sop, a payment in unverifiable coin to make up for the provable failings of focus and memory鈥�?鈥�, and cites truisms by the likes of Saint Bernardino of Siena: 鈥淓veryone wishes to reach old age, but nobody wishes to be old鈥�.

He conjures the great and the terrifying, such as the courageous king of Troy during its famous war with the Greeks, against whose light the glow of our own lives pales in comparison: 鈥淧riam was sitting on top of the world at your age; so was Margaret Thatcher, before whom all trembled. There is nothing saga-worthy about a nursing home and dementia 鈥� or a retirement condo for that matter鈥︹��

The cumulative effect of such a tour of ageing ought to be depressing, but it鈥檚 actually bracing. Trying to keep up with the sheer breadth of knowledge in Losing It and actually reading all the wonderful books Miller weaves into this strange, dark, intellectual kilim will keep you constructively engaged while you wait for science to throw up a wild card that might just delay, or even cancel, your own miserable end.